Google Apps Premier Edition Launches

prostoalex writes "Google Apps is adding a premium offering: a custom 10-GB Gmail box, Google Calendar, GTalk instant messenger, Writely, Google Pages, Google Custom home page iGoogle and Google SpreadSheets for $50 a year per employee. The NYTimes provides some details on competitive pricing: 'By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange,... in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner.' Boston.com quotes an analyst for Nucleus Research on Google's ease-of-use: '"What we see in the Google Apps is a real focus on making them easy to use and intuitive," she said. "And that's something that Microsoft has been unable to do in all of its years with Office."' But the same analyst is bearish on Google Apps' shortcomings relative to the mature Microsoft desktop products: 'Right now Google's going to give companies a better ability to negotiate with Microsoft.'"

Instant messenger?

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought that everyone except Google believes GChat to be a great time-waster, not something you'd offer to your corporate clients to increase productivity at work...?

Re:Instant messenger?

Dont think of it as an instant messenger then. Think of it as a "textual telephone"* that goes over the Internet. I've seen a few businesses around here where IM has become as important as email and the telephone to keep in touch

*Yes, I know, GTalk does voice also

Re:Instant messenger?

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought that everyone except Google believes GChat to be a great time-waster, not something you'd offer to your corporate clients to increase productivity at work...?

I was about to moderate this discussion, but I had to respond to you. Instant Messaging, despite rumors to the contrary, can actually be a very productive tool at work. My company uses Lotus Sametime, and I have found it to be a very useful way to get responses to quick questions. No, you cannot hold major discussions over Instant Messaging. And, if you work in a small (

IMHO, the productivity that is gained by Corporate IM easily outshines to potential pitfalls.

Re:Instant messenger?

And, if you work in a small (

You probably just got distracted by an instant message while typing.

Re:Instant messenger?

I agree, back when I was in the university I used to perform my programming projects with 2 other friends, we usually fired Windows Messenger + application sharing (word, notepad and other things) to share some code and the like. I am talking about 2001 or 2002. It was great, at least for us. I think one of the "secrets" is that
1. All the members in the conversation *must* know how to touchtype (or at least write faaast).
2. All the members in the conversation *must* agree to write 1 paragraph with one idea per "message" I\n, hate\n, when\n, people\n, writes\n, one\n, word\n, and\n ,press\n enter\n.

It started as a "cool" experiment (to test the "new technology") but it was so helpful that we used it trough the remaining University time. This all was on 56k dialup, and yeah it was fast enough for us.

Re:Instant messenger?

I think one of the "secrets" is that
1. All the members in the conversation *must* know how to touchtype (or at least write faaast).
2. All the members in the conversation *must* agree to write 1 paragraph with one idea per "message" I\n, hate\n, when\n, people\n, writes\n, one\n, word\n, and\n ,press\n enter\n.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Instant messenger?

We use a Jabber-based system at my office. If you are not on it at all times, the boss gets pissy. It's the primary way we communicate in-office. We mostly use it to send links to folders on the file server, or to get quick responses to questions.

Re:Instant messenger?

IM is way better than email for 90% of what people use email for.

when i worked on a helpdesk, we were all on the phone all the time, and we used AIM and an AIM chatroom to IM with eachother about stuff like what systems were up, what was down, that sort of thing. you can talk on the phone (well, listen to an idiot yammer) and answer other people's questions pretty easily that way. plus, you can have several conversations going at once which is way more efficient than a single phone conversation. it's also a great way to move files between people you know since most corporate email systems strip the most interesting of attachments without some sort of manipulation.

i would do personal stuff with it as well... IMing with my wife all day cuts down on the "how was your day/we never talk anymore" meme that cuts into precious evening game time... both mine and hers.

my only beef with IM is that even with clients that let you have several "presences" (jabber/trillian) there aren't many that let you talk to people while they are in an MMORPG. asheron's call had a third party plugin system called DeCAL that let you run many things, including an IRC and aim client ingame which created an allegiance chat channel before one was added to the game in addition to being reachable while in game... but to my knowlege there is no way to reach someone with a default install of a given game without being logged into the game as well.

it would be nice to be able to tell my little brother that he has a meat body somewhere outside of WOW that needs to eat dinner once in a while.

obvious flaw?

Needing to be connected to the web sucks for those who travel.

Or am I the only one to have thought of that?

Tom

Re:obvious flaw?

being able to access your data and apps anywhere is just as useful when your laptop gets stolen.

In the en it is a mixed bag. Somethings will require local data. Other times i really miss having everything on the network. Finding a balance between the two will be the best bet.

Besides a corporation or government who gives their employees data to take home is just asking for trouble. How much of ten's of thousands of customer personal data has been lost your way?

I just am tired of waiting for corporations to stand up and upgrade their networks to even present standards. the USA doesn't even have 3G yet Japan and europe are working on going beyond that.

Re:obvious flaw?

I would use this, if google offered me the facility to install these apps on a server under my control.
In a large office with hundreds of users, having all that traffic heading out through the wan interface would be prohibitive, it would be much easier to only have the few off-site workers traffic heading in through the wan interface instead.

Re:obvious flaw?

That's where OpenOffice comes in. We're inventing technology we just don't need.

Documents should be stored in some sort of version control system (CVS, etc). When you hit the road you check out the revision you need and store it locally. Not exactly hard.

When I travel to give my talks [e.g. toorcon] I usually have 3-4 copies ofthe talk with me. On a CD, on a laptop, on a USB drive, etc. That way if one fails [which has happened] I have another. One year I went there my laptop wasn't all smooth so I had to borrow one, no problem, files on a usb drive, used another laptop and went on my way. Had I been stupid and put the presentation in a single spot [e.g. google] I'd be fucked [also because Toorcon NEVER has net access].

Also you have to think about the needless traffic this generates with minor revisions/etc going over the wire. Think of it like a dumb terminal, but with millions of users from all over the globe. That has to be a lot of traffic.

Tom

Won't replace Excel in businesses

I use the google apps at home, even though I have a licensed copy of office, cause I like to access it easily from work and home.. However, the one very limiting factor is the spreadsheets won't connect to databases. Lots of businesses have excel doing simple DB reporting, and this just won't work with the spreadsheet app. (yet??)

Re:Won't replace Excel in businesses

As well the loss of mail merge style features in Doc (people are still calling it writely??).

I never really expect to see full macro capabilities, but a simple mail merge, even from google speadsheet would be nice.

Re:Won't replace Excel in businesses

I anticipate the Google apps are going to continue to improve. Since last night they have added fonts (was a very basic selection before), added the docs and spreadsheet into the domain settings so that things are easier to share within-company.

Also, after they bought Writely and the spreadsheet company they also baught a second spreadsheet company. Reviewing their product I noticed it had a much more complete set of Excel features. How hard would it be for them to tack an SQL service to this? My guess: Not too hard at all.

Re:Won't replace Excel in businesses

Or the fact that, currently, Writely doesn't even have the most basic functionality like utilizing the INSERT key on the keyboard?

Sorry, but it's not going to replace any Microsoft Office product until the program works like *every other* word process on the most basic level.

Fair Comparison?

[Google Office Stuff] for $50 a year per employee. By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange

Is that really a fair comparison, though? Google's email is great, but their Spreadsheet and Word Processor solutions are nowhere near as sophisticated as MS Office. And in an office environment, many of those differences do matter.

I haven't played with Google Calendar enough, but would it be a workable replacement for the Outlook calendar? i.e. Can you schedule meetings with a simple invite rather than telling everyone to put it on their calendar? Can other users see your unavailable periods when scheduling?

I hate to give Microsoft props, but there are features that are critical to the office use of software. If Google doesn't provide those features, they will not be able to compete at all. Which means that the supposed "leverage" with Microsoft would be nothing more than hogwash.

Re:Fair Comparison?

As of right now (at least with the free version) the integration of calendar and mail is lightweight. You can send invitations from your calendar, but if you receive ical (*.ics) attachments from others, they just appear as attachments and don't have any quick way of getting the info into your calendar. You have to save the attachment, then go into calendar and do an import, but I haven't had that always work - especially with something like a cancellation.

Re:Fair Comparison?

Is that really a fair comparison, though? Google's email is great, but their Spreadsheet and Word Processor solutions are nowhere near as sophisticated as MS Office. And in an office environment, many of those differences do matter.

Yes this stuff is obviously not going to be as good as a full MS Office install. That doesn't really matter though, because this clearly isn't intended to be an Office "killer" or whatever you want to call it. Google is going after the low hanging fruit - people who have relatively simple needs and would prefer a cheap option, particularly one that has the benefits of offsite backup and accessibility from everywhere. That's not everyone, indeed it is a small market segment, so its hardly going to put a dent in MS Office's market share. On the other hand it is, aparently, a big enough market segment that Google thinks they cna make money at it - and I would tend to agree with them. MS Office is overkill for a lot of small companies, and those same companies tend to be the ones that are less inclined to have full time IT staff to manage file servers, backups, and so on. Just because the product isn't perfect for everyone doesn't mean there isn't a market big enough to exploit. Not everything has to be about total market domination.

Just becuase it's cheaper

Doesn't make it better.
I really don't see google apps being a threat to office anytime soon. I used their spreadsheet program last night for the first time to plot some data for simple graph. The reason google apps is simple and easy to use is that it doesn't do much, like graphs and charts. Also preforming simple tasks can take a while for the the spreadsheet to update. Their are plenty of other options that are easy to use and easy to find both of Office and Open Office. I just don't see the reason to pay 50 bucks for this. It's only a competitive price if your offering a competitive product.

Of course if I'm wring about the charts etc I'm sure you all will let me know. Thanks in advance ;)

Not Yet

All the Google products are nice as far as they go, but I can't see how they can replace full-featured apps like Office and Exchange in the "enterprise". Maybe for personal and mom-pop business, but can they do what most major businesses need? I don't think so. Yet.

If features were exact I would still take MS

Why? One simple reason, if I use an MS solution I am the sole caretaker and gatekeeper of my data and information. If I use Google they have everything and can and will copy and use it to their benefit, and perhaps your competitors benefit.

Great marketing?

From a marketing standpoint, this initially looks to be pretty strong. Google is hitting the white space, but I still have to question it - is the white space there because nobody moved into it or is there because it represents a non-viable product mix?

I once heard networking defined as being in a room, having your data located 200 feet down the hallway and believing that it is a good thing. I think the ASP model is flawed in providing the needs for large organizations. There are issues surrounding security of data and uptime availability that probably outweigh the cost savings. Security is huge, especially given Google's stated mission to make ALL information available to the world. Do I want to give them my confidential sales information? Not.

The cost savings isn't what its cracked up to be either, since the cost is $50 per employee, per year. It seems like Microsoft is about 4-5 years between major releases, so your cost is $200-$250 per seat for 4-5 years.

Overall, I'll pass for now.

Um...it was fun while it was free...

iGoogle and Google SpreadSheets for $50 a year per employee

Um...it was fun to play with while it was free. $50/year for these toys is a bit much.

Needs to be an appliance

My company has been interested in Google Apps for a while, but we won't touch it until we can buy an Google Apps appliance machine and install it in our own facility.

We're not holding our breath.

Re:Needs to be an appliance

Agree, absolutely. Love the software, but like hell are we hosting key services elsewhere. With Google hosting the apps, if we lose Internet access, and we might as well close up and go home.

Personally, I'm amazed there isn't an appliance version of GMail available yet. Although I suppose they'd have to get it out of beta first...

Duh

"What we see in the Google Apps is a real focus on making them easy to use and intuitive," she said. "And that's something that Microsoft has been unable to do in all of its years with Office."

It's easy to make something easy and intuitive when they have almost no capability. Let's see Google make it a lot easier and intuitive AND have the same functionality.

IMAP

One of the major things that prevents us from going Gmail is the lack of imap support. I can't force my users to give up whatever email app they currently like. Gmail is a great product, but without some flexibility there, it can't catch on where IT does not have an iron grip, especially at the executive level.

PS Pop is -not- Imap. :)

Regardless of how good the apps are aren't.....

..... A few chairs will go flying in Redmond over this.

Why should companies trust Google?

Why would a company entrust Google with all their corporate emails, and many of their files as well?

Re:Why should companies trust Google?

Why would a company entrust an IT department with all of their corporate emails, and many of their files as well?

Google becomes an IT supplier with this scheme, and contracts will be written that stipulate confidentiality and security. This is no different than hiring an outside consultancy to run your own company owned servers. Cries of "OMG Gooogle will pwn us all!!!1!one!!" are simply not justified. It's a business relationship, same as any other.

Not so much Microsoft ...

The people that really need to watch out are Lotus. I've been admining a Domino server for about 8 years now and let me tell you, it's the second biggest pain in the ass that I have to deal with. Google's solution would fully replace Lotus for all the things we use it for and actually do it better.

Big cost saver potentially

They're focusing on the $225 vs $50 per employee per year, but $225 isn't the TCO number. You also have to calculate the salaries of the IT staff who maintain the company email server and such, or the hosting for the same. I expect that pushes the number far higher. I'm assuming that Google will also see better uptime than the typical small-company email server, and it's probably smaller companies who will find this most attractive. If I were starting my own company, today, I'd go with this. If I started up with 10 people, I'm looking at $500 per year for full mail hosting and document storage as well as infrastructure for collaboration. I also won't have to buy a single server for anything. I don't have to worry about documents getting lost.

For what you get, and for everything that you *don't* have to buy, that's idiotically cheap.

Other considerations

Back when we where considering going from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 ( a huge pain in the butt ) I considered moving us to an online alternative. intranets.com now WebOffice ( webex umbrella ) provided somewhat of an alternative at that point. Now they are even better that they offer email hosting, with your domain not "gmail.com".

Several factors stopped me from being able to make that jump.

1) Legacy...everyone was using Exchange and we had tons of email in it that would be a pain to copy into folders.
2) Regulation. How does google keep all company emails in one place that can be archived and backed up. I'm sure Google won't loose someone's email anytime soon ( less likely then us ), but how do you document their backup procedures.
3) Current email addresses. No one wanted to give them up.
4) Internet bandwidth and reliance. People tend to think of the internet like electricity, but we are not there yet. It is funny that I get a faster connection at my house with a cable modem then our dual t1s provide...and a lot cheaper. This is another post, but unless you are in a big data center getting a decent sized pipe at a reasonable price is still overpriced.
5) Gateway level controls. We wanted to see every email that came in. We run a spam firewall, but if it blocks errantly we have a log. If Google blocks and email?
6) Customer support emails. We have tons of email addresses for our clients/etc that would probably be a pain to setup.
7) Fax support. We have to integrate with a fax server...yep it sucks.
8) Public folders ( ie email boxes accessible by more then one person )...ties in with 6.

To name a few.

If I was starting up a small software company I'd be all over this. As far as for enterprise uses...I think Google has a long road ahead of them...but they are speeding car.

Linux

By using Linux (FREE), you get a full office suite FOR FREE, you get an E-Mail Server FOR FREE, you can host your internal and external web sites on a Web Server FOR FREE...
With only the cost of maintaining the system (minimal, for smaller companies)...the cost is much reduced...only $25 a year per domain at dyndns.org...

I used to work in Redmond (not MS)

and you would overhear many MS employees' lunch meetings around here. As early as 3-4 years ago, there was a lot of buzz about starting projects like what Google's doing now. The "Live" initiative will supposedly eventually convince people to submit micro-payments to use Office products. ($0.25 per Word doc creation, $0.50 per printing, etc.) The MS people who were talking about this acted like it was the best thing since sliced bread and that it will cure cancer. It'll probably be deployed around 2015.

Its currently free

People are a bit confused. You can use everything there for free right now. The main benefit you get for $50/year is support, and larger mail boxes, plus some API options for tapping into the system.

This is helpful especially for small to medium sized businesses (the bulk of all businesses and over half of all employees outside of government are small to medium sized). This is also useful for orgs with employees traveling or off site most of the time.

So, to say it another way. Google offers for FREE right now. google for Domains which gives you free gmail (2gb per email), gdocs, calendar, and chat. Plus a portal page that the company admins can control, and has feeds of email and calendar.

Not a perfect solution by any means, as many have already mentioned, but you don't have to pay $50 a year for it. Only pay that if you want all the extra stuff on top of that.

Not bad

This almost makes the Microsoft solution seem reasonable: "By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange".

Well shoot, is that all? Sounds like a deal to me. That is, what, about .6% of your average office user's salary? And not that I'm a fan of Microsoft or anything, but I have to admit that Office and Exchange are pretty featureful. And lets face it, even if half the employees don't utilize the features, there's always a handful who need the advanced features of Excel or Word. You could pay the hefty per-user licensing and have a few people using Office and everyone else using Google apps, but then you have the ol' document interchange problem. Every now and then, a non-Office user needs to open some ridiculously complex spreadsheet sent by the CFO or whatever. Google certainly isn't going to handle it. Or you coudl just get a site license and not worry about it at all. Microsoft Word may be overkill, but so what? How many people these days can't open up Word and write up a simple document?

Of course, OpenOffice is another option, which is still, in my opinion MUCH more featureful than Google apps. Lets face it, businesses really do need the features.

Google is following the same old tired fallacy which states that "all you have to do is implement the 10% of functionality that 80% of people use, and you have a Microsoft killer." Just because it is Google and it is web based, doesn't mean it is any more of a challenge to Microsoft.

-matthew

Better negotiating position is the point

Google is using Microsoft's own tactic against them--use one strong revenue stream to subsidize aggressive underselling in another. Almost all of Microsoft's profit comes from their Windows/Office/Exchange product lines--they then use this profit to offset heavy losses as they attack new markets (like--Internet advertising). Google is simply executing the reverse--using their strong ad revenue to subsidize an attack on Microsoft's office turf. Even if few companies actually sign on with Google, they're all going to use Google's offering to negotiate lower pricing with Microsoft, thereby hurting a key revenue stream--mission accomplished.

Microsoft's battle against GO Penpoint is instructive because it's well documented from both sides. The GO side is covered in the famous book Startup, and the Microsoft side is covered in the book Barbarians Led by Bill Gates. In that book the GO chapter ends with the death of Microsoft Pen Windows and a revelation from one of the managers--that the goal was not to sell Pen Windows, but simply to block GO's success in the marketplace---"Block the kick," not score the touchdown.

Google vs Microsoft

ZDNet UK's got a video interview with Google about Web Apps Premier. In it Google's European enterprise director, Roberto Solimene, promises that the product offers 'seamless integration' between the various applications. He also claims that Google's "hundreds of thousands of servers worldwide" will help it compete against Microsoft.

You can see it here [zdnet.co.uk].

Don't see the benefit

In this day and age of lawsuits and corporate rules and regulations I can't see any large company using hosted services where their data resides on other servers. That would open up a whole can of legal problems, especially if that data was compromised. Another example is say that Google kept backup tapes for 10 years, but company was policy was no backups for more than 6 months. A lawsuit comes along and the lawyer for the other side realizes you use Google and subpoeanas the backup tapes from Google and finds the evidence they want.

a couple of points

A couple of points:
- Even in large corporations there are different groups of users and some of those groups can *really* use a nice cheap lightweight corporate portal thingy with email & etc. Consider cable installers or repair technicians or any group of otherwise smart folks who aren't in an office all the time but also don't travel in airplanes as a primary part of their job.

- There are other really useful features that google can integrate into this offering that will make it stickier in the corporate market. Three immediately come to mind:
* wikis
* message boards
* project management tools (like basecamp)

maybe this is too specific

maybe this is too specific, but I can't keep files on servers that aren't owned by my company. I am doing gov't contract work, and my company is required by law to be responsible for the security. Google apps would be great, but only if there were a box we could own that we could keep in a locked room and be responsible for it.

They Fail

Here is where they just FAIL trapped in the warp of their own success not knowing the failure that waits for them behind the next door.

I like google, gmail, etc, etc., etc..

All I wanted was to get some extra space in my inbox since the free space isnt' enough for me..

To use this service you need to have a domain name...
I own serveral but I don't want my email @ my domain name

All of that is a minor point, just well something that I want...

Here is why they fail...

I can't contact them... there isn't an easy simple way to reach them and find out if there is an alternative..

When you click through into their help system you get into page after page of "try this and try that..."

It's one thing to offer free stuff for FREE and skimp on the help...

When your trying to sell something.. you need to be able to help people...

Not that my problem is such a big deal, but each group of people signing up will have their own problems, and the biggest one is that they can't get anyone on the phone or in email, without jumping through so many hoops, pages, forms and FAQs that well, it's like talking to a wall...

POP vs Exchange (or even IMAP)

gMail is pop. As slick as the interface is, I really like working with IMAP or even Exchange servers. It is nice for all of my devices to be in sync. I hate checking email on my phone, then getting back to gMail and everything I did is (to some extent) lost.

If gMail implements IMAP, *THEN* they will have a much more competitive offereing, at least on the email side of things.